Mar 5, 2022·edited Mar 5, 2022Liked by Handwaving Freakoutery
> The number of people who were pro-mask, pro-vax, pro-lockdown, and who are not currently pro-Ukraine in a geopolitical conflict that does not involve NATO, does not involve the USA, and has nothing to do with our national security, is effectively zero.
Probably. I doubt it through. There's gotta be a group of leftists who are isolationist due to USA-hatred.
And the later set is far wider, unless you're only looking at the USA. Approximately the whole public opinion in Poland is pro-ukraine, for example. Not the case for the other sets, not remotely.
Also, at least here, cancellation frenzy isn't related to leftism, almost at all. Because there isn't much leftism. I do not think it's the same phenomenon, at all.
I'm pro non-ridiculous ("boycott Coca-Cola" kind of stuff is dumb) sanctions tho. I do not think my support is caused by following the trends, given I was strongly against US leaving Afghanistan when almost everyone cheered for leaving.
I don't think your trolley problem is representing the situation correctly. If we're assuming "rational decisionmaking" for one side, we should do so for the other. _Why_ is bombing a convoy directly causing a thermonuclear war? Other side needs to act. Why would it be sensible for them?
Reasonable shelling point for MAD is a direct attack on a nuclear-capable nation. NATO streaming troops into Ukraine would not be that. Why are goalposts moved so remotely?
I've recently seen opinions that NATO shouldn't have expanded to _Poland_, which pissed me off pretty badly. Like, really? Why not move them even further - you know, _everything_ is worth it to prevent nuclear war. So if Putin wants to occupy USA - will you claim USA should surrender? Because otherwise, everyone dies, so...
I think this posture is cowardly, showing weakness despite superior capabilities.
"Also, at least here, cancellation frenzy isn't related to leftism, almost at all. Because there isn't much leftism. I do not think it's the same phenomenon, at all."
I'll buy that for sure. Cancellation is a behavior that any power group performs once it's in power, and does so within its bounds to maintain purity. My go-to example of red cancellation was the Dixie Chicks during the Iraq War.
Fads and group think are basic features of human psychology. Probably goes back to our tribal origins. It applies to everything from clothes to stock markets to witch burning to current affairs. Social media adds a new dimension, but there were similar rushes to judgement all throughout human history. The best antidote is to study history and have a time-tested set of moral beliefs. Then you can be less susceptible to the madness of the mob. Not a very optimistic opinion, but it keeps me from being surprised by mob-like behavior.
Necessary, but not sufficient. The "Blue Church", modern-rationalism, is failing under disruption (suburban consumer culture, plus network technology bypassing legacy hierarchies of curated expertise, to summarize Jordan Hall's explanation of "broken sense making" systems).
The only way for tradition morals to survive is for a post-postmodern sense making system that is anti-fragile to disruption to be added to traditional morals (as well as the modern rationalism/science).
BJ Campbell probably discussed that with the Stoa/Game~B and/or Integral theory people recently, but I'm behind in viewing those videos.
Ronfeldt's TIMN model is a pretty good summary (mostly devoid of new age jargon) of how traditional morals, modern scientific rationalism, postmodern relativism and post-postmodern "holism" (Kegan stage 5) is evolving.
My chief concern is with the team running the show here in the USA. Egregores or otherwise, I have no faith in those who control the levers of power at this point in time. The only thing I'll give them is this: They're cunning enough to know that they need something dramatic to occur in order to avoid a significant loss of power in a few months, and they're evil enough to take action on that proposition. Dangerous combination.
as bad as this current situation is, even when factoring the potential for how bad it can get, my deeper concern is what is the next thing around the corner. the momentum is definitely not in our favor.
Mar 5, 2022·edited Mar 5, 2022Liked by Handwaving Freakoutery
I had an email from the MOOC organisation Coursera today. They had kicked a Russian university off their platform and wrote to virtue signal about it. What do you think the course was??
i'm starting to get some serious pre-WWI vibes from our egregore zeitgeist. what is it about new centuries, do they not really get going until everyone picks a side and decides that mass hysteria and mass murder are just the thing to get the blood flowing? (in both senses)
how many pre-WWI intellectuals, artists, journalists etc thought a nice, quick and easy war would provide glory and "meaning" and re-energize their societies with all that rich martial anger and energy? it seems that humans are so desperate to attach themselves to a historical cause (what Ernest Becker called an "immortality project") that they'd rather watch the world burn than face their own ultimate irrelevance.
or maybe this is just how new worlds are born, atop a mountain of skulls and bones from the previous world?
First time I ever read you and I thought it was fantastic, a real eye-opener for me. It’s a McLuhanesque type of analysis: the medium reshapes us, it changes how we function.
The truly weird thing going on right now is that there's no secret cabal distributing the behavioral instructions by attaching the behavior to a preexisting meme such as nationalism. What's going on now is the groupthink itself IS the cabal.
I think therein lies Marshall McLuhan‘s analysis of the transformation wrought by our inventions: that which mediates our world. Technology changes us in unknowable ways, and always. His was a cautionary tale, he didn’t say the global village was gonna be good he said it would be a disaster and completely unmanageable.
I have a very strong opinion about human affairs: we are delusional to think that we meaningfully control the our own inventions have on our reality. Solution: minimalism and humility, do as little as possible, avoid arrogance in the belief we know what’s likely to be the outcome. Like Hippocrates: first do no harm. We always and inevitably fail on this metric. We are doomed to repeat the same failures. Peace through strength is a legitimate remedy to human stupidity. Mike Tyson said it the best, “everyone has a plan until you punch him in the face“. We’re a bunch of fucking idiots.
What's an NPC? Non-player character? I've never been subject to the gaming egregore.
By the way, it's ‘its’ if it can't be replaced by “it is” or “it has“ and still mean the same thing. Yes I know “auto-correct” is a demon.
(‘Its’ is a determiner, like ‘his’, ‘her’, ‘my’, ‘your’, ‘our’, and ‘their’; conceivably it could be used in the same way as ‘mine’, ’yours’, ‘his’ [different context], ‘hers’, ‘ours’, and ‘theirs’ too.)
NPC does mean non-playable-character. While it is a gaming term, it is used as an insult against people who cannot think for themselves. Like their video game counterparts, a real life NPC cannot have an intelligent conversation. They have a handful of programmed lines they repeat over and over but are incapable of processing any information they are not programmed to process. In a video game these lines are coded into the NPC by the developers. In real life, the NPCs get their software updates from the MSM.
As an example, I largely abandoned reddit as a discussion forum in 2020 due to the presence of NPCs. Every time I implored them to apply a cost-benefit analysis to the harm caused by lockdowns I was met with the same handful of non-thinking responses that didn't take a word of my arguments into account. "We can't risk lives when there's so much we still don't know about covid!" and of course the classic "You're fine with killing grandma to boost your stock portfolio!"
On top of that, despite many of my comments making it clear I was (at the time) a supporter of Bernie Sanders, I can't count the number of times I was told "Go drink bleach you selfish Trumper!" as they could not fathom that someone on the left might question the MSM and democrat party narrative.
In my circles, including my family, NPCs are a sizeable majority. They are slightly differently programmed here in Australia, but not all that much. My sister virtually called me a Trumper when I shared a Project Veritas video on a family Messenger group. I didn't provide lengthy caveats listing all my misgivings about the over-the-top presentation, sensationalism, interwoven politico-religious signalling, repetition, etc., giving those I was sharing it with the benefit of the doubt that they would give me the benefit of the doubt. I hoped they would see through all that and just take the testimony of the witness for what it was worth. But no, that one especially indoctrinated sister (I doubt very much she'll ever read this) responded with more venom than I ever remember receiving from her before. It was disappointing and very disheartening. I fear she will be one of the last to wake up, if she ever does. After listening to an RFK Jr interview I shared with her she said it was best not to talk about it with me. Until then she had viewed him in a positive light, judging by the heart she reacted to the link to it with (before she'd listened to it).
“The International Cat Federation banned cat breeds which originate from Russia from competitions, as if these pets were somehow secretly controlled by KGB microchips. An Italian university cancelled Dostoevsky, as if a dead guy was going to kill Ukrainians.”
Please bear in mind that your audience is not confined to America, and neither is Twitter's or the internet's in general.
Rant:
This applies to ALL Americans who post on the internet. Is it in America's and Americans' best interest not to give a flying F about anyone who isn't American, especially while expecting everyone who isn't American to give a giant F about America and Americans? Can you imagine how eNdEaRiNg this pervasive America-is-everything attitude is to non-Americans?
> The number of people who were pro-mask, pro-vax, pro-lockdown, and who are not currently pro-Ukraine in a geopolitical conflict that does not involve NATO, does not involve the USA, and has nothing to do with our national security, is effectively zero.
Probably. I doubt it through. There's gotta be a group of leftists who are isolationist due to USA-hatred.
And the later set is far wider, unless you're only looking at the USA. Approximately the whole public opinion in Poland is pro-ukraine, for example. Not the case for the other sets, not remotely.
Also, at least here, cancellation frenzy isn't related to leftism, almost at all. Because there isn't much leftism. I do not think it's the same phenomenon, at all.
I'm pro non-ridiculous ("boycott Coca-Cola" kind of stuff is dumb) sanctions tho. I do not think my support is caused by following the trends, given I was strongly against US leaving Afghanistan when almost everyone cheered for leaving.
I don't think your trolley problem is representing the situation correctly. If we're assuming "rational decisionmaking" for one side, we should do so for the other. _Why_ is bombing a convoy directly causing a thermonuclear war? Other side needs to act. Why would it be sensible for them?
Reasonable shelling point for MAD is a direct attack on a nuclear-capable nation. NATO streaming troops into Ukraine would not be that. Why are goalposts moved so remotely?
I've recently seen opinions that NATO shouldn't have expanded to _Poland_, which pissed me off pretty badly. Like, really? Why not move them even further - you know, _everything_ is worth it to prevent nuclear war. So if Putin wants to occupy USA - will you claim USA should surrender? Because otherwise, everyone dies, so...
I think this posture is cowardly, showing weakness despite superior capabilities.
Falling for pascal's mugging is bad.
"Also, at least here, cancellation frenzy isn't related to leftism, almost at all. Because there isn't much leftism. I do not think it's the same phenomenon, at all."
I'll buy that for sure. Cancellation is a behavior that any power group performs once it's in power, and does so within its bounds to maintain purity. My go-to example of red cancellation was the Dixie Chicks during the Iraq War.
Ok neo-con we can tell by your post you have uncritically slurped down the Sunday news show talking points, now tell us something we haven’t heard.
Fads and group think are basic features of human psychology. Probably goes back to our tribal origins. It applies to everything from clothes to stock markets to witch burning to current affairs. Social media adds a new dimension, but there were similar rushes to judgement all throughout human history. The best antidote is to study history and have a time-tested set of moral beliefs. Then you can be less susceptible to the madness of the mob. Not a very optimistic opinion, but it keeps me from being surprised by mob-like behavior.
Necessary, but not sufficient. The "Blue Church", modern-rationalism, is failing under disruption (suburban consumer culture, plus network technology bypassing legacy hierarchies of curated expertise, to summarize Jordan Hall's explanation of "broken sense making" systems).
The only way for tradition morals to survive is for a post-postmodern sense making system that is anti-fragile to disruption to be added to traditional morals (as well as the modern rationalism/science).
BJ Campbell probably discussed that with the Stoa/Game~B and/or Integral theory people recently, but I'm behind in viewing those videos.
Ronfeldt's TIMN model is a pretty good summary (mostly devoid of new age jargon) of how traditional morals, modern scientific rationalism, postmodern relativism and post-postmodern "holism" (Kegan stage 5) is evolving.
My chief concern is with the team running the show here in the USA. Egregores or otherwise, I have no faith in those who control the levers of power at this point in time. The only thing I'll give them is this: They're cunning enough to know that they need something dramatic to occur in order to avoid a significant loss of power in a few months, and they're evil enough to take action on that proposition. Dangerous combination.
The number of people calling for a no-fly zone is scary.
as bad as this current situation is, even when factoring the potential for how bad it can get, my deeper concern is what is the next thing around the corner. the momentum is definitely not in our favor.
I had an email from the MOOC organisation Coursera today. They had kicked a Russian university off their platform and wrote to virtue signal about it. What do you think the course was??
How the Brain Makes Decisions from HSE University
!!!
Hilarious.
Creepy but also hilarious.
i'm starting to get some serious pre-WWI vibes from our egregore zeitgeist. what is it about new centuries, do they not really get going until everyone picks a side and decides that mass hysteria and mass murder are just the thing to get the blood flowing? (in both senses)
how many pre-WWI intellectuals, artists, journalists etc thought a nice, quick and easy war would provide glory and "meaning" and re-energize their societies with all that rich martial anger and energy? it seems that humans are so desperate to attach themselves to a historical cause (what Ernest Becker called an "immortality project") that they'd rather watch the world burn than face their own ultimate irrelevance.
or maybe this is just how new worlds are born, atop a mountain of skulls and bones from the previous world?
The splash image for HWFO is a pile of LEGO bodies for a reason.
Perhaps egregores are why, to paraphrase Timothy Snyder, journalists are the heroes of the information age.
Shall we ask our newly minted champions what egregorian kryptonite might comprise?
wool in the ears? a solar flare? wifi scramblers?
I heard birds are real, btw, from a bird.
Now, if only we had actual journalists at any of the major journalism outlets...
That’s worrisome
First time I ever read you and I thought it was fantastic, a real eye-opener for me. It’s a McLuhanesque type of analysis: the medium reshapes us, it changes how we function.
The truly weird thing going on right now is that there's no secret cabal distributing the behavioral instructions by attaching the behavior to a preexisting meme such as nationalism. What's going on now is the groupthink itself IS the cabal.
I think therein lies Marshall McLuhan‘s analysis of the transformation wrought by our inventions: that which mediates our world. Technology changes us in unknowable ways, and always. His was a cautionary tale, he didn’t say the global village was gonna be good he said it would be a disaster and completely unmanageable.
I have a very strong opinion about human affairs: we are delusional to think that we meaningfully control the our own inventions have on our reality. Solution: minimalism and humility, do as little as possible, avoid arrogance in the belief we know what’s likely to be the outcome. Like Hippocrates: first do no harm. We always and inevitably fail on this metric. We are doomed to repeat the same failures. Peace through strength is a legitimate remedy to human stupidity. Mike Tyson said it the best, “everyone has a plan until you punch him in the face“. We’re a bunch of fucking idiots.
What's an NPC? Non-player character? I've never been subject to the gaming egregore.
By the way, it's ‘its’ if it can't be replaced by “it is” or “it has“ and still mean the same thing. Yes I know “auto-correct” is a demon.
(‘Its’ is a determiner, like ‘his’, ‘her’, ‘my’, ‘your’, ‘our’, and ‘their’; conceivably it could be used in the same way as ‘mine’, ’yours’, ‘his’ [different context], ‘hers’, ‘ours’, and ‘theirs’ too.)
NPC does mean non-playable-character. While it is a gaming term, it is used as an insult against people who cannot think for themselves. Like their video game counterparts, a real life NPC cannot have an intelligent conversation. They have a handful of programmed lines they repeat over and over but are incapable of processing any information they are not programmed to process. In a video game these lines are coded into the NPC by the developers. In real life, the NPCs get their software updates from the MSM.
As an example, I largely abandoned reddit as a discussion forum in 2020 due to the presence of NPCs. Every time I implored them to apply a cost-benefit analysis to the harm caused by lockdowns I was met with the same handful of non-thinking responses that didn't take a word of my arguments into account. "We can't risk lives when there's so much we still don't know about covid!" and of course the classic "You're fine with killing grandma to boost your stock portfolio!"
On top of that, despite many of my comments making it clear I was (at the time) a supporter of Bernie Sanders, I can't count the number of times I was told "Go drink bleach you selfish Trumper!" as they could not fathom that someone on the left might question the MSM and democrat party narrative.
In my circles, including my family, NPCs are a sizeable majority. They are slightly differently programmed here in Australia, but not all that much. My sister virtually called me a Trumper when I shared a Project Veritas video on a family Messenger group. I didn't provide lengthy caveats listing all my misgivings about the over-the-top presentation, sensationalism, interwoven politico-religious signalling, repetition, etc., giving those I was sharing it with the benefit of the doubt that they would give me the benefit of the doubt. I hoped they would see through all that and just take the testimony of the witness for what it was worth. But no, that one especially indoctrinated sister (I doubt very much she'll ever read this) responded with more venom than I ever remember receiving from her before. It was disappointing and very disheartening. I fear she will be one of the last to wake up, if she ever does. After listening to an RFK Jr interview I shared with her she said it was best not to talk about it with me. Until then she had viewed him in a positive light, judging by the heart she reacted to the link to it with (before she'd listened to it).
This looks awesome as follow up, hopefully it will be recorded and published:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/swarms-egregores-63651110
excerpt:
MAR 10, 2022 AT 8:09 PM
Unlocked
Swarms, Egregores, and Autocults w/ John Robb, BJ Campbell, Patrick Ryan, and Jordan Hall
March 23rd @ 2:00 PM ET.
John Robb, BJ Campbell, Patrick Ryan, and Jordan Hall engage in a dialogos to make sense of a new emerging entity in the noosphere.
Recommended viewing/reading ...
Swarms: https://youtu.be/kIFfwXuRwG0
Egregores: https://hwfo.substack.com/p/memespace-egregores-and-nuclear-war
Autocults: https://youtu.be/630qu6u7JN4
RSVP: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0tceyvpzgrGdxwQET5Zt5f0dwmLbOx5oxE
“The International Cat Federation banned cat breeds which originate from Russia from competitions, as if these pets were somehow secretly controlled by KGB microchips. An Italian university cancelled Dostoevsky, as if a dead guy was going to kill Ukrainians.”
The world has truly gone mad.
Please bear in mind that your audience is not confined to America, and neither is Twitter's or the internet's in general.
Rant:
This applies to ALL Americans who post on the internet. Is it in America's and Americans' best interest not to give a flying F about anyone who isn't American, especially while expecting everyone who isn't American to give a giant F about America and Americans? Can you imagine how eNdEaRiNg this pervasive America-is-everything attitude is to non-Americans?